Why can't we be left-handed in FPS's?

[Lemmy]

Here's one thing that has annoyed the hell out of me for a very long time. There are a lot of FPS's out there, and many are pretty good. Many focus on simple fun, but a few take it to a whole new level and want you to compete with other people. Battlefield, for instance. Clearly a lot of time and money have gone into creating these games, and the end result can be awesome. How many of you don't look forward to Battlefield 3, for instance?

There's just one small problem. Other than a single Unreal Tournament (think it was 2k3), the gun is always on the right side of the screen. Always. Why? Because most people are right handed. It might seem fine to most people, but it's not. If you are right-handed, you won't see the problem because you don't have one. But try to play with the gun on the left side of the screen in the few games that lets you. How does it feel to play? My brother-in-law loves FPS-games, and I let him try to use the gun on the left side in UT2k3. He couldn't do it. He's pretty good at 'normal' FPS-games, but once he had the gun in the wrong hand, he sucked. Big time.

It's quite simple, really. If you are right-handed, you hold the mouse in your right hand, so the gun on the screen becomes an extention of your own hand. Instead of focusing on a crosshair, you can aim simply by pointing where you want to hit. There's a straight line from your shoulder down your arm to your elbow to your hand to the tip of the gun. If you use the gun in the left hand (or have the gun on the left side of the screen), everything changes. You can no longer aim down the barrel of the gun, but you need to aim in the cross between the line your arm make and the line the gun makes. In other words, use the crosshair and aim somewhere in the general direction in front of you, on the middle of the screen. There's a huge difference there.

In most games, this isn't much of a problem, evne for a lefty like me. But what about competitive games like Battlefield? In games like these, everything counts. If you want to be good at it, you need to worry about things like framerate, reaction time, mouse speed and so on. And obviously, aiming as fast as possible, as accurate as possible. By not letting us have the gun in the correct hand, games gives us lefties a big disadvantage.

Find yourself a game where you can choose what side of the screen you want the gun on and put it on the wrong side. Then you'll see what I mean.

 

[LukeW]

I seem to recall a game (may have been Quake 2) that allowed you to switch the gun placement around so that it was left-handed. I tried it once and felt it was really disorientating, despite the fact that I was using a crosshair to actually aim.

I can see where you're coming from. If I was left-handed then I would like the option to switch the gun around.

Gaming in general must be a bit frustrating for the lefties, considering mice, keyboards, controllers and even joysticks are generally designed to accomodate right-handed players.

 

[Cayal]

I think it may be due to the positioning of the buttons on a controller/keyboard. They're on the right side.

Confusion might rein with button-to-relative-placement on a lefty.

 

[Kyndylan]

Yeah, I've definitely played at least one game where you can swap the gun round...but I can't for the life of me remember what it was! And I know some (like Rainbow Six 3) allow you to remove the weapon model if you want. Personally it's never bothered me...but then I am right handed, so I guess it wouldn't. I suppose that the problem for developers is that they can't just flip the same art asset and use it for both sides, given differences like safeties and also the ejection port. But still, you'd have thought it wouldn't be tooo expensive/time consuming.

For that matter, I know in real life that lefties can have problems with some guns, as spent brass heads straight towards them. So the problem is wider than just video games!

 

[Somni]

I'm pretty sure that there was a game (though it may not have been a major commercial one) that had the gun on the left as default when using a pistol as the character was supposed to be left handed. It was a bit odd to start with but you get used to it.

Edit: I wonder if it was Die Hard related, McClane was a leftie I think.

 

[Dozmonic]

Counterstrike used to have the gun start on the left by default and I think even now in cs:source you can change which hand it's in